Hurt
by potterheadedgleek22
Summary: We all know Monroe has lost a lot since he met Nick, but exactly how much of a toll has it taken on him? What's been going through his mind? And what lengths will he go to to smother his own numbness? Set right after "Big Feet." Warning: mild self-inflicted pain. Gets a bit dark. Angsty Monroe oneshot.


**Author's Note: Hi everyone! I'm back with something new that I've been itching to try out. It's my first non-sick!fic since I started on this site, which is rather exciting. **

**I wanted to try something that dug a little deeper into our favorite Blutbad, Monroe. I heard a song the other day called "Hurt," and it just fit so perfectly with Monroe's life. This is NOT a songfic... it is merely a story inspired by a really powerful song. It gets a bit dark, so I apologize for that. But I can't be the only one who has noticed that, since he met Nick, Monroe's lost quite a few people dear to his heart. He never really breaks down, and I think it's high time we see what happens behind the doors of his house when Nick is away. No one is that tough. I got a bit imaginative, and very sad, and this is what came of it.**

**Warnings: Yes, as I mentioned in the summary, this story does contain mild self-inflicted pain and a fair bit of darkness. If you don't like that sort of thing or get offended by it, I'd recommend not reading. It's not overly detailed, though, just for the record.**

**Spoilers: If you have not seen "Big Feet," "Of Mouse and Man," or "Last Grimm Standing," be warned now, there are quite a few spoilers.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Grimm or the song that inspired me to write. Everything goes to their respective owners, and I do not make money off this. I just absolutely love Monroe and can't resist putting him in these situations.**

**Please enjoy!**

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**Hurt**

Though I exited the bar with a smile on my face for my old friend's sake, the second I was safely off the road and locked inside my house, I completely lost it. My mind slipped far away from me. I could not, for the life of me, cry or scream, though I wanted to so badly it actually hurt. In frustration, I transformed into my Blutbad form, but that didn't make me feel any better. I thought maybe I should feel like ripping something to shreds or killing or something like that, but strangely, my first instinct was to turn back into a man and slump down on my couch, deflated, foiled, numb.

I lost track of time. For days I was in this state, something that I knew couldn't be shock. I'd gone through this cycle too many damn times for it to be shocking anymore. Rather, it could only be called numbness. I couldn't muster the usual zeal with which I carried out daily tasks because frankly, nothing in the world made an iota of difference to me anymore. I didn't feel like doing anything but sitting there lifelessly.

People I knew would call this "wallowing." My mother would've called it "grieving." My kind would call it "weakness." I too would've come up with a clever name for it if I wasn't so indifferent and completely disinterested in doing so.

My eyes wandered to my phone as it began to vibrate on the table in front of me. The caller i.d said it was Rosalee. This was the fifth time she'd tried to call me today, tenth time overall. The incessant vibrating echoed in my eardrums. It was loud and obnoxious. I let it continue until the "missed call" alert showed up on the screen. I thought it was over, but about a minute later, the all-too familiar "new voicemail" screen appeared before me. She had left another message – a long one by the looks of it. I just couldn't bring myself to move and check the message, so I decided to let it go into the collection with its siblings, all of which were still unchecked. The alert remained on the screen a long time, burning into my retinas, before the bright LED light faded to black and I was alone once again. I tried to think of Rosalee, of her face, of what I felt for her. That usually was able to stir up some sort of emotion in me. She had been calling for a while now, leaving longer and longer messages each time, as I gauged by the time it took for the "new voicemail" screen to replace the "missed call" one. She must be worried, I mused. Nick must've told her what happened. Nick. He was another one who'd been calling nonstop since I'd entered this vegetative state. I assumed he was worried too. I hoped that was it and that he wasn't just calling for another Grimm problem.

Let them worry, I told myself. It's time to stop kidding myself. I'm a monster. I'll never be anything less. Everyone I know goes away – they all ended up dead, lost, or injured. I thought about Larry, about Michael and Tom, Hap, my family… hell, even Angelina. I didn't want to add Nick to that list, and I especially didn't want to see Rosalee in those numbers. I cared too much about the both of them. I had to distance myself from them now; it was the only way to save them from such a fate. Not checking their messages or returning their calls, not hearing their voices or seeing their faces, was a good start, though I was not exactly in control of it currently. Right then, I couldn't have brought myself to pick up that phone if I had _tried_. Would it get harder as I went on, I wondered? How could I avoid people I held so dear?

What had I become? I was trying to make sense of everything, but my mind kept running in circles and I could feel absolutely nothing at all. Three of my good friends, dead. Hap, dead. Everyone I knew ended up going away somehow. I thought I should feel something, some sadness or remorse or anger, but it was so familiar to me now, so _expected_ to lose those I loved most, that all I felt was numb.

_Could_ I still feel, I wondered? Did my heart and my nerves even still work? At this moment, it didn't seem like it. I actually doubted I had the capability to feel anymore. And that's when I got an idea. It was so stupid, such an asinine idea. It was something I never _dreamed_ I'd resort to. But I was desperate to feel _something_, anything at all, even pain.

I didn't actually want to bleed. I wasn't good at the whole pain thing. I thought back to those electrical shocks in that awful cage, or the beating I received at the hands of the reapers and decided that yes, I was most certainly strong enough to go through with this, not to mention desperate enough. The memories of those pains, though strangely detached from me as though I had watched them happen to someone else, were fresh and vivid enough to bring me to action.

But how to go about doing it was another question. A needle would do the job effectively, I decided. Sure, a knife or razor would have been more efficient, but I decided I wanted this to be slow and drawn out so I could focus on something other than the deadness inside me.

I forced myself to stand and search for a needle. The nearest one was with my medicines in a cabinet in my kitchen. I used one daily to inject myself with the drugs that helped me to "stay good." I quickly shot that thought away as it caused a great void to open in my chest. I had suddenly remembered that Larry and the others had tried a different approach to staying good, and it had been their end. I pulled a small needle out and shut the cabinet, staring intently at its bald, shiny head. It was my ticket to finally feeling something again.

Suddenly, in a surge of desperation and eagerness at the prospect of ending this awful lack of feeling, this dullness, I rolled up my sleeve and stabbed myself with the small instrument. At first, the sensation in my arm was less unpleasant and more routine, as my body was used to being torn into with small, sharp objects for my strict regimen. But once my body realized there was no syringe attached to the needle, no liquid medication being forced into my bloodstream, realized the lingering pain from prolonged exposure to the needle, my nerves suddenly became alive. I concentrated hard on the painful hole getting ripped into my flesh, only on that. It made me feel sane again and somehow ludicrously normal.

As my whole arm began to sting and tingle, I thought of all the people I'd lost, focusing especially on Larry and my other two most recently fallen friends. I finally felt the pain for them the way I was supposed to be feeling it, even if it was artificial and self-inflicted. I felt a fissure opening in my chest and it became difficult to breathe. I let the feeling of grief wash over me, relishing it. I made the tear in my flesh a little larger, savoring the burn in my arm that accompanied it. Finally, I removed the instrument and discarded it. I noticed I had drawn blood, which I washed off under the hot tap of my kitchen sink. I didn't realize until then how heavy and ragged my breathing had become from the whole ordeal. But it felt good to feel again, no matter how I had to make it happen.

I flopped back down on the couch and curled up into a tight ball. I stared at the puncture in my arm for a long time until my tears blurred it into nonexistence. I didn't bother to brush away the moisture. In fact, I welcomed it. Finally, an expression of something other than lifelessness had arrived. I was still alive, living, breathing, feeling. I was real. A dark bruise slowly began to blossom around the wound I had created. It too was welcomed.

What was I doing? What had I just done? This wasn't me. I wasn't the type to so easily take things out on myself – or anyone else for that matter. But that was just it. So many emotions had been pent up inside me for so long that needed to be addressed, released, taken care of. It felt like I had just purged my soul through a hole in my skin, washed the torturous emotions down the sink, and reminded myself that I was still human and, although I now was mostly unfazed by horror, pain, and loss, although it had become customary in my life, these horrors, pains, and losses still affected me in other, more subtle ways than shock, sadness, or rage. It could quite possibly destroy me with numbness and insanity as well.

My head was pounding intensely now. I closed my eyes and wiped the sweat off my forehead with my hand. Once I had discovered I could feel again, a giant flood of emotions overtook me. I found my face wet with anguished tears and my head and heart heavy and full of sadness and regret. This was more like it. This was how one was supposed to deal with sorrow and trauma.

I suddenly found myself craving a heart-to-heart talk, or at the very least some form of human contact. My bleary, tear-blurred, bloodshot eyes landed on my phone, which was now still, dark, and silent.

_I shouldn't_, I thought to myself. _You know what happens to everyone you get close to_. I knew distance was the only way to protect her, to protect them both. But my resolve was suddenly broken, along with the skin of my arm and my beating, bleeding heart. I yearned to just hear her voice, to let her comfort me, to let her know I was going to be okay. I could worry about protecting them tomorrow, I decided as I reached for the phone. There was time later to dwell on the idea that they were just going to end up gone like all the rest. Right then, all I wanted was to be comforted by someone I cared about, someone who understood me. I wanted to know there were still people around who loved me. Because right then, I was drowning in an ocean of hurt.

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**A/N: So that's it. I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. I'd love to hear what you thought of this. Reviews are always lovely. Thanks so much for reading!**

**~PG22**


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